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© St. Petersburg Times, published September 5, 2002
In an article published shortly after Sept. 11, E. Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair magazine and a man seemingly obsessed with (in order of importance) himself, the New York social scene, himself and celebrity gossip, peeked out his window and proclaimed that the attacks marked "the end of the age of irony."
And you thought we were still in the age of paradox.
Time ran an essay on the subject, and "the end of irony" became a catch phrase. We would, we were told, take everything seriously from now on.
So. Was Carter right?
Or was he just being ironic?
And what exactly is irony, anyway?
Irony is a figure of speech in which what is stated is not what is meant. Usually, it's just the opposite. ("You're wearing a toupee! I didn't notice.")
Irony is used for effect, with the assumption that the reader or listener is in on the joke. (For purists: The only real irony of Alanis Morisette's Isn't It Ironic? is that she wrote a hit song about irony without having a clue what it is.)
If Carter was right, we are no longer clever, cynical, snide or sarcastic. We are, in essence, no longer poking fun at people and things. George Carlin, Al Franken, Robin Williams, Chris Rock -- pack it in, boys. You're done.
But they aren't, are they?
Why did Osama cross the road?
He didn't. They don't have any.
Whenever someone proclaims a major shift in the public's mood, that person is either: a) correct, but so late in perceiving it that the country has already moved on to its next mindset, or b) hopelessly out of touch with reality without knowing it.
Vanity Fair's office is located in Times Square. Carter, 51, gets around town in a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Navigator. He wears custom-tailored suits and dines regularly with fashion designers, CEOs and Hollywood big shots. And his friends call him Graydon. Draw your own conclusions.
Americans can sense the irony in anything. That's what we do. We're all trapped in our own version of a Woody Allen movie.
Irony can subside, as it did in the ten days or so after Sept. 11. But it's never far away. (David Letterman's ratings rose nearly 40 percent in the first three months after Sept. 11.) So the reports of irony's demise were premature.
What do bin Laden and Fred Flintstone have in common?
They both look out of their caves and see Rubble.
But maybe we're the ones out of touch. Maybe Carter does have his finger on the pulse of America. From his perch in Manhattan, he may have sensed something that we, the unclean huddled masses down below, are oblivious to.
We didn't know we take life so seriously now. That we all have an irony deficiency.
Here are two classic examples of how unfunny we are:
Two weeks after Sept. 11, The Onion, a satirical weekly news magazine, ran these headlines: "U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We're At War With," and "Not Knowing What Else to Do, Woman Bakes American Flag Cake."
And then there's this from Carter, who, in an interview with the Washington Post a week after his first comment, insisted that he was actually talking about "the end of the age of ironing."
Ironic, isn't it?